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After Months of Teasing, the New 13-inch MacBook Pro Is Finally Here

It’s finally here. After some murmurs on Twitter this morning that today was the day, Apple dropped a refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro, complete with new Magic Keyboard and a bump to its specs.

The new 13-inch Pro is available starting today on Apple’s website. All four configurations feature a quad-core processor, a 13-inch Retina Display, Touch Bar and Touch ID. While the base $13,00 and $1,500 models sport an 8th generation processor, the two more expensive models give you the option of Intel’s latest 10th gen 10nm chips and start at $1,800.

Apple says in its release that it should translate to 2.8 times faster performance compared to the last 13-inch Pro, which was powered by a 14nm dual-core U-series processor. The new 13-inch also gets a boost up to 16GB of RAM for certain standard configurations, with the ability to upgrade up to 32GB.

With Intel’s 10nm 10th-gen processor it can also promise faster graphics performance with an updated integrated Intel Iris Plus Graphics chip for 4K video editing and the ability for users to connect to Pro Display XDR at 6K resolution. As with the new MacBook Air, Apple’s decided to double the storage on the 13-inch Pro, bumping it up to 256GB standard on the devices with 8th-gen processors and 4TB at the max. The cheapest MacBook Pro with a 10th-gen processor is equipped with 512GB SSD standard.

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The new 13-inch is also following the same playbook as the latest 16-inch and the Air, featuring the new scissor-switch Magic Keyboard. That means the physical escape key is back, along with the new “inverted-T” shape for the arrow keyboards.

One thing that didn’t come to pass were rumors that Apple was planning on changing the screen size to 14 inches—though it’s still possible that the rumored 14.1-inch model might pop up sometime later this year. As for the screen itself, Apple says it’s got 500 nits of brightness, and its True Tone tech.

Despite the global pandemic, the 13-inch Pro is the latest in a series of new product launches. Earlier in March, the company dropped the refreshed Macbook Air along with the new iPad Pro, followed soon after by the cheaper iPhone SE. And if rumors are to believed, the refreshes aren’t quite done yet. While it’s more than likely its flagship 2020 iPhone will be late this year, there’s a good chance we’ll also see some new AirPods, followed by some Arm-based MacBooks in 2021.

If you don’t want to wait on reviews and are trying to figure out which of these MacBook Pros to upgrade to, we’d point to the $1,800 one with a 10th-generation Intel processor, updated graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. But again, waiting to see how it really compares to its predecessors is a better idea.